What is Digital Healthcare?

Digital Healthcare uses information technology, which includes both hardware and software solutions and services, to help address some of the challenges faced by an ageing population and to resolve some of the public health inequalities present in the UK today.

Terminology often used are explained below:

Telehealth uses electronic information and telecommunications technologies to provide long-distance healthcare and professional health related education, and support public health. It is a generic term and includes Telemedicine, Telemonitoring and Telecoaching.

Telemonitoring allows patients to be monitored remotely, for example in their own home, using a range of monitoring tools to capture physiological measurements, such as blood pressure, and send the results to a different location for review - normally via a supplier’s intranet link.

Telecoaching uses one-to-one audio, visual and/or/ interactive communications to support healthcare / social care in the community, encouraging the promotion of self care and improving the management of conditions.

Telemedicine provides remote video consultations between healthcare professionals and patients either in patients’ own homes, nursing homes, hospitals to GPs or hospitals to prisons. It helps to reduce patients’ lengths of stay in hospital and also supports care outside hospital, including early discharge, or avoids unnecessary admissions to hospital.

Trust's Telemedicine Experience

Airedale NHS Foundation Trust is an acute care provider with a unique range of digital healthcare solutions, which have been developed by our consultants working closely with our patients'. Our clinicians work hard to understand patients needs and are truly committed to continually improving the quality and safety of our patients’ experience. We have developed our digital healthcare services over the last 12 years and our telemedicine experience over the last 6 years.